Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Knight and Kirzner Reconciled by Mises

Perhaps the best way to reconcile Knight's and Kirzner's views of entrepreneurship is to suggest that the former explains entrepreneurial action in the context of reaching what Mises called "the plain state of rest", while the latter - in the context of tending towards what Mises called "the final state of rest". And while the former is a realistic state of affairs, unlike the latter, which is purely hypothetical, Mises clearly saw the two as analytically complementary. Thus, perhaps it is no more difficult to see Knight's and Kirzner's analytical approaches as equally complementary.